Vayikra - what is big and what is small?
Leviticus 1:1-5:22
Summary: Don’t let them tell you that the book of Vayikra is boring. Once you break the code, it is actually fascinating. From the outset, we are told about small things and micro-acts that have enormous affect. Sort of like COVID.
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I, personally, am experiencing a sort of spatial distortion in which it is hard for me to tell what is big and what is small. Over the last 20+ years, I have spent enormous amounts of time on projects that turned out not to matter (my pile of unpublished writings speaks to that), and have invested scandalously little time in projects and relationships that matter a lot (my pile of frustrated friends and ex-friends speaks to that). I often look back and sigh. I am trying to grow in this area.
But what is “grow”? How big is a grow? How much grow do you expect to grow in a day? A week? The length of a quarantine? How much time is a lot of time? How much effort is a lot of effort? What does “enough” mean? What is “too much”? What scale do I use - nanogram or kilogram?
These questions continue to surface and resurface as the days go on, and I continue to gravitate to writings and facebook posts and others’ efforts that speak to me as little-things-that-are-big-things (and the nefarious opposite).
Rabbi Gedalia Koenig, in a letter to his son, writes about the traditional Breslov practice of finding good points in one’s self and in others - that is, sifting through a person’s actions in order to find elements of goodness, even and particularly within actions that seem to have been negative: “Do not let any good point be insignificant in your eyes, even if it seems to be the smallest of the small, for permission is not granted to us to gauge the size of any good point. None of us knows anything.”
He goes on to quote a passage from the Chapters of the Fathers: “Be careful with an ‘insignificant’ mitzvah just like you are careful with a ‘significant’ one, for you do not know the reward of mitzvot.” With certain acts, rather than try to measure their anticipated impact, we must simply be present with them and do them with whatever fullness is available to us.
Rebbe Nachman writes that the hitla’havut - the flaming-up, inspiration, aspiration, reaching - of a Jewish heart is infinite. That’s really big. This infinite energy must somehow be channeled into very finite, small-world acts. As the heart blazes toward the Infinite, it can be very difficult to focus on a small and finite act - washing this dish, saying this word of prayer, smiling kindly to this person, doing this small favor for someone.
Rebbe Nachman calls on us to hold both of these truths at once. If the small gets too small, then the balance will be upset, with serious consequences. to wit, there is a small alef in the first word of the parsha - determining the difference between vayikra and vayikar. Vayikra means “and He called.” It implies purposeful contact. Vayikar implies happenstance - “and He happened upon.” There is a world of difference between feeling like we are being “called” to our lives and feeling like our lives are “happening” to us. That little alef makes a huge difference.
I heard two men speaking last week about how much they will miss kiddush club at Saturday morning services, and perhaps they could meet in the driveway (at six feet! BYOB!) and make a l’chaim together. If I could, I would join them. All my judgments about kiddush club have fallen away. (Well, most of them.)
6 feet - 4 amot - of space between people. Is that a big space? For some people it feels like an ocean. At this point, given how little we see each other, 6 feet can feel so close and intimate.
Our parsha is deeply concerned with how to be close. The singular act with which the parsha is concerned is the korban. This word does not mean sacrifice, or even offering. It means “a coming-close” or “a bringing close.” To come close to the Equidistant One requires that we cross a seemingly-uncrossable gap. But this gap can be crossed when a handful of grain, a bit of oil, and a bundle of frankincense are offered with a humble heart.
Many people’s minds and dinner-table conversations have been occupied with a spherical object that is approximately 125 nanogram in diameter - that’s 125/1,000,000,000 of a meter. Small? This is not particularly surprising - microorganisms have always killed more people than even wars have. We know things don’t have to be big to be deadly. And hopefully we know this fact’s equal opposite - things don’t have to be big to be life-giving.